


Day's 7kpp snippets

by DistractedDaydreamer



Category: Seven Kingdoms: The Princess Problem (Visual Novel)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-25
Updated: 2020-11-28
Packaged: 2021-02-26 01:47:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,646
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21961582
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DistractedDaydreamer/pseuds/DistractedDaydreamer
Summary: A quick place to put together disconnected drabbles from my OCs
Relationships: Corval Lady/Jasper, Gisette & Jarrod (7kpp)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This first drabble is from just after the first matchmaker interview, featuring Isidora, my Corval Lady

Isidora could feel the tears welling up behind her eyes and the tightness in her throat that told her that yes, she really was going to cry. She dug her fingernails into her hand as hard as she dared while still being covert, letting the pain distract her and alleviate some of the pressure. She took in a deep breath to steady her voice, and then smiled at the matchmaker, curtsied, and left. 

She was fine, she told herself, as she spoke to Jasper, Ria and Sayra in the most convincing tone she had left in her. “Could I just have a moment to think”, she asked them, pitching her voice soft and contemplative as she could make it. And once the door shut, and she thought about that disastrous interview, and the tears came. 

She had to be quiet, she thought, as she let the sobs wrack her body. It felt like a wave crashing, followed by little hiccuping gasps that she couldn’t control as she tried to recover her breath. She felt lightheaded. Her fingers were tingling. Her breaths were a choked staccato. 

Breathe, she told herself firmly. Breathe. She lifted her head to look at her own reflection, catching sight of her face twisted in an ugly shape. Imagine if mother could see you now. Imagine if the court could see you. Is this the face you would show?

The thought focuses her. She scrubs at her wet cheeks with the edge of her trailing sleeve. Though her breaths are shaky, she watches herself inhale and exhale, she stops letting her face scrunch up, relaxes her cheek muscles, smooths out the wrinkle in her forehead. She is still crying. Her shoulders are shaking. But that is okay.

Now her eyes aren’t scrunched up, but tears give them a gentle sheen. Raised eyebrows, widened eyes, the downturn of her mouth show that she is sad, but not uncontrolled. She watches herself in the mirror until her shoulders stop shaking and her tears dry up, and then she smoothes out her face to a neutral, tucks a few strands of hair back into place, and makes her way to the washbasin to wipe away all traces of her weakness. She smiles into the mirror, but it seems to her eyes still a bit sad. She frowns.

Then she smiles again, putting the effort into it, so that her eyes light up, teeth peek out, and the light catches on the gold face paint she wears. Ah. There is the smile she needs. 

After all, no one likes a songbird that cannot sing.


	2. words unsaid (prompt:future)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 2017 7kpp week, day 7, Isidora

When Jasper comes to her room at the end of the summit, he is holding another wrapped package. The hustle and bustle of the corridors, with all of its hectic servants and delegates packing up had hardly disturbed his outward calm facade. Yet there is a feeling turning his limbs to lead as he longs irrationally to walk slower, as if it would change a single thing that was going to happen.

Today, the Corvali ships would leave. Tomorrow, the island would be empty once more, and would stay so for seven years. And Isidora would be gone. Once, he had looked forward to the summit’s end, longing for the still peace and contentment he had before.

Now, he takes a deep breath. He pushes open her warm oak door.

As it swings forward, he stops in surprise. Lady Isidora is hunched over on the floor surrounded by parchment, her quill scratching away elegantly in her distinct looping scrawl. Around her, her bags were packed, leaning against the bed, which was strange because all the bags should have been taken down to the harbour two hours ago. And her two maids were no where to be seen.

“Jasper,” she says, straightening so that despite being seated in an entirely unladylike manner on the floor she seemed to command the empty room like a queen. Or perhaps, he admitted wryly to himself, that was his own bias.

“Lady Isidora. Where are Sayra and Ria? The Corvali ship will be leaving in the next three hours, so you should be packing up already. Has no one come to pick up your bags?” he says. The title feels unfamiliar on his tongue after she had insisted he drop it for the last few weeks, but he reminds himself that distance is necessary. Only with distance would he gain objectivity, both in his histories and in his life. But he regrets it as a flash of uncertainty clouds her eyes.

She rises a little ungracefully, tangling her feet in her long layered skirts, and almost trips forward. Thankfully, she catches herself before she falls and after Jasper has a chance to retrieve his traitorous hands from where they reached out instinctively to steady her. Distance. He needed distance. Realising he was still holding his gift, he set it down on the perfectly good desk Isidora had not been using.

It seemed a day for firsts, for Isidora’s poise seemed disturbed as well. She fumbled her a letter out of her hands and pressed it into Jasper’s. “I sent them away. And you don’t need to send anyone to get my bags yet.” Her lips twitch into a sort of half smile, before smoothing back into her mask. “Read this.”

It is the work of moments to unfold the single, simple sheet, and begin to scan the precise handwriting. The matchmakers handwriting, he notes immediately. The meaning of the letters doesn’t dawn on him until Isidora touches his hand lightly and he looks down into her eyes.

“I’m staying,” she says softly, searchingly. “At least for a while. If you want me to.”

He can’t seem to think. “You’re not–”

“No.” Jasper has to close his eyes. The silence hangs between them for a long moment, before Isidora asks, “You aren’t…disappointed, are you? I want you to know I don’t expect anything of you, anything at all–”

But Jasper’s eyes are bright and warm when they dart up to meet hers with sudden, surprising shyness. Her voice trails off. He looks back down to where his pale fingers cradle her calloused fingertips and smiles; his voice, when it comes out, does with heart-stutteringly simple honesty. His words: I think I love you.

Five simple words wrapping an ocean of meaning, proffered like a gift. He is saying: You entrance me. I think you are beautiful. Your heart is a furnace that only ever warms, not burns. I am drawn to you the way people are drawn to cliffs, to wild animals, to deep sea diving, with the knowledge that it may kill them and they will be lost to the depths but I cannot stop my yearning anyway, you, you may be the end of me; I love you like the moon loves the sun, following over and over in endless circles, only a mirror to your brightness; I love you.

So perhaps Isidora can be forgiven for how those five simple words overwhelm her. She too is an expert in conveying meaning without really saying anything. For once, she is speechless. Instead she lets the tension slip from her shoulders and back and dropping her head into warmth of his shoulder and lets her tight embrace do the talking. And if her tears dampened Jasper’s shirt…Well, she thought, she could be excused just this once. She would have the rest of her life to be composed. Or not, as she pleased. The thought wasn’t as scary as she once thought it would be.


	3. katiya's letter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Backdating, prompt 4: present, 7kpp week 2017

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is what Katyia’s letter which the MC can receive in week 3 might possibly look like. its pretty short but enjoy! i may write more in this era because katyia is so fascinating to me.

Dearest Eleanor,

Sometimes I wonder why I still write to you if you never respond. I wonder if mother and father are blocking my letters from reaching you, or if you simply read them and toss them away the way you always used to do with your old suitors. Do you remember old Thomas Cristen Exalcius the Third, and his flowery prose? Sometimes when I read some of the pretentious bull the delegations send in, all insincere refusals and barely veiled rudeness I imagine that you are reading it aloud in that same voice, and then I cannot feel so bad.

You asked me once, before I left, what was so very special about the isle. Why I would renounce kingdom and crown to study there with intractable, obstinate scholars who, and I quote you here, “wouldn’t move out of the way of a charging boar for love of their own bravery”. At the time I couldn’t give you a proper answer, but let me try now.

The isle has been around forever, you know that. No one has ever seemed to leave it or speak of what they found there. When I visited the first time to ask for their cooperation, they rebuffed me because they said I didn’t know what my ownself was asking for. That I was an idealistic fool. Their system was incomprehensible to me because it was so different from what we have in Revaire. But you and I know that Revaire does not have the strength to stand against all its neighbours, not when we are splitting our attention between our own citizens and foreign threats. I couldn’t do anything in Revaire because our parents wouldn’t let me. With a choice between a system I knew was wrong and a system I didn’t understand…well, I chose trying to understand.

I can see your judgemental expression already. I assure you sister, all that indoor reading has not rotted my brain. I may not agree with it, but I can see why they support it, and that means I know how I can argue against it. And they have agreed to host it. Now all I need is for delegates from all the other countries to come. I know it will work. If we could just force them to live alongside each other, they could learn so much. Realise the essential personhood of their neighbours. And if they do that, developing real relationships with each other, they cannot hate each other. It is genius, if I do say so myself.

You would probably like their leader here. Young, handsome, passionate, a smartass, stubborn prick…you know the type. Though we’ve disagreed on most everything, I think we’re friends now. I wish you could meet him. You’d like him, I think. Please come to the isle. You can consider this letter an invitation to my birthday. Or come early. I miss you so much.

Keeping you in my thoughts,

Your loving sister,

Katyia


	4. children of the coup

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 7kpp day 2, 2017: sacrifices

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> because it can’t have been easy growing up in such a turbulent political landscape–there is no way the revaire children had a normal childhood. so thats what they’ve sacrificed. my headcanon for this fic is that gisette is 13 and jarrod is 10, but you could probably imagine them otherwise. enjoy :)

Running. Her slippered feet smack into the stone floors and she curses the lack of friction the delicate shoes have as she skids across the stone floors. Her pale hair keeps swaying across her face and sticking to her forehead, obscuring her vision as she irrationally keeps turning to check if someone is behind her. A cacophony of shouts and the clang of blades is echoing in her ears with her rabbit heartbeat and panting breath. Where is her brother? **  
**

She can hear the clanking of steel boots behind her as the turncoat former captain of the guard chases her up the stairs. “Princess!” he shouts. “Princess, I’m here to help!”

Gisette knows better than to stop. She had been the one who had overheard him asking her favourite lady to get out of the castle and run away while she still could. She had reported the betrayer to her father, but she hadn’t heard enough details that day. Maybe if she had snooped around a little more, or talked to the lady more convincingly…but in the end the lady had ran away, the faithless coward, and her family had no warning when the turncoat had lead a troop of soldiers to slaughter the royal family.

Or tried to. Gisette careens around the corner and keeps sprinting towards the royal wing of the castle, her eyes cast down. Her hope that there would be protectors there falls flat as she sees the bodies. The splatters were red like roses, she thought inanely as she dodged the pooling puddles of sticky fluid. There had been a battle here earlier, but now the only soldiers around were dead ones.

She feels a stitch in her side growing tight from running. Her breath comes in gasping gulps. All the doors were open, so she could see clearly that there was no one there. Her eyes darts around widely, trying to find a way out – but this part of the wing is a dead end, designed so that defenders could always see an enemy coming. Even as she thinks, the guard must be approaching. Jarrod’s room, she thought. He was learning to fight now – maybe his sword –

But no. The blade is missing. Her gaze darts to the open window, three floors above the ground, then to the open door, then to the furniture in the room. She wasn’t quite desperate enough to take the jump of certain death, and walking out would be futile. So hide. She hears the discordant tone of steel against stone in the rhythmic pattern of approaching footsteps. No time.

She ran to the bed, flattening herself to the ground and then rolling underneath.

“Princess Gisette!” she heard. He is here. Her breath huffed out and she tried to silence it, forcing herself to breathe slowly so she wouldn’t be heard. “Come out princess. Your uncle just wants to speak to you. Let me help you.”

Gisette stares at her hands in front of her. Her hands and feet are tingling. Her fingernails dig into her palms until she can feel a trickle of blood. The clanking moves around the room, pacing, searching. A swish of a lifted curtain. A lifting of a chest. The footsteps move towards her. He is so close she can hear his breath and she sends a prayer up to whoever is listening that he can’t hear hers. “Ah,” he exhales. The cupboard door creaks.

The traitor kneels down. “Princess, come out.” Gisette can’t stop herself – she turns her head and sees the traitor’s face staring right into her hiding place and she feels lightheaded and her chest heaves uncontrollably and a part of her thinks i have to be quiet even though she doesn’t anymore. She can see his bloodstained sword on the floor next to him. This close, she can see the crinkled crows feet at the edge of the traitor’s eyes. He’s smiling now, but his eyes aren’t crinkling at all.

This close, she sees it when his eyes bulge outwards and film over. Spittle builds up on his lips. All the muscles in his neck tense as he exhales a shuddering, foul breath. It’s then the body collapses forward, and she is left staring into the space where his body used to be where someone else is now. “Gisette?” asks a high, trembling voice.

“Jarrod,” she says, the sound coming out broken and shaky and shy. Gasping, she crawls out from under the bed and clings to him. He is trembling and doesn’t protest when Gisette hugs him as tightly as she can, as if afraid she wasn’t really there with him. Her bloody hands smear on the back of his cream shirt. Her eyes are watering, so she closes them and lets the tears slip cool and almost comforting down her face. Her brother lets out a soft cry and drops his head onto her shoulder.

“I killed him,” he mumbles.

“Yes,” she whispers. “You saved me.”

“Yes,” he says.

* * *

They sit there, the two children of the coup, until the guards return with their father and they are required to stand to witness their backstabbing uncle’s execution. Jarrod closes his eyes and looks away. Gisette keeps her eyes fixed on the man’s pained face until he stops moving, and still feels empty.


End file.
